Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumChinese nuclear disaster 'highly probable' by 2030
The headline is sensationalistic, but the argument behind it is completely valid and it shows that risk assessment methods used by the nuclear industry have been demonstrated to be inadequate.
He Zuoxiu
25th October 2013
As the UK prepares to build a fleet of new nuclear power stations with Chinese capital and expertise, a former state nuclear expert warns: China itself is heading for nuclear catastrophe.
To reduce costs, Chinese designs often cut back on safety.
Some members of the nuclear power industry rely too much on theoretical calculations, when only experience can provide real accuracy.
The lifetime of nuclear reactors is calculated in "reactor-years". One reactor year means one reactor operating for one year. The world's 443 nuclear power plants have been running for a total of 14,767 reactor-years, during which time there have been 23 accidents involving a reactor core melting. That’s one major accident every 642 reactor years.
But according to the design requirements, an accident of that scale should only happen once every 20,000 reactor years. The actual incidence is 32 times higher than the theory allows.
Some argue this criticism is unfair....
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2133281/chinese_nuclear_disaster_highly_probable_by_2030.html
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FBaggins
(26,748 posts)Some easy errors to spot:
1 - Assumes that all reactors are the same - It doesn't matter what design changes are made or what lessons are learned... just take the total number of reactor years and divide by the number of core melt incidents.
2 - Assumes that all fuel melt incidents are of equal "nuclear catastrophe" significance.
3 - The 2030 date in the title essentially claims "there isn't enough experience with Gen III reactors to judge an accident - so it's "completely valid" to assume that they'll fail at the same rate as the Russian RBMK design that gave us Chernobyl".
BTW - Can you provide a list of the claimed 23 reactor core melt incidents? Surely they're counting only incidents that apply to the reactor-years metric (commercial power reactor incidents with core melt of some degree - not military submarine reactors, or experimental reactors, or weapons reactors, etc)... right?
kristopher
(29,798 posts)The issue is the fact that there is a given claim of X level of safety made by proponents of the nuclear industry. History proves that claim to be wildly inaccurate.
From the journal Ethics, Policy and Environment Vol. 14, No. 3, published October 2011Fukushima, Flawed Epistemology, and Black-Swan Events
Kristin Shrader-Frechette
Department of Biological Sciences and Department of Philosophy,
University of Notre, Dame, IN, USA
Similar government-nuclear-industry cover-ups occur globally, perhaps because of the nuclear-industry-military connection (Shrader-Frechette, 2011). In fact, two weeks before the March 11, 2011 Japanese disaster began, Tokyo Electric admitted ‘it had failed to inspect 33 pieces of equipment’ for cooling the six Fukushima Daiichi reactors. Japanese regulators warned that the ‘quality of inspection was insufficient’ and that Tokyo Electric continues to ‘manipulate data,’ to have ‘uneven safety records, and a history of cover-ups.’ Earlier, regulators forced Tokyo Electric to temporarily shut 17 plants because it ‘falsified inspection records and hid flaws over 16 years—to save on repair costs.’ For years, General Electric (GE) engineers who designed the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi reactors warned they were ‘outdated,’ and more susceptible to explosions, accidents and radiation releases than newer reactor designs (Tabuchi et al., 2011, pp. A1, A6; see Makhijani, 2011).
...When atomic-energy proponents, including the US and Japanese governments, use BSC, they typically resort to one of two types of data-trimming fallacy, in order to allege that nuclear-core-melt probabilities are low. In the first sort of trimming, fission proponents report only ‘major’ core-meltdown accidents in utility-owned reactors. For instance, WNA says ‘there have been three major reactor accidents in the history of civil nuclear power’ (WNA, 2011). Yet the criteria for ‘major’ melts are never explained. Also, who owns a power-generating reactor—civilian corporations or a government agency, like the Tennessee Valley Authority—is largely irrelevant because all nuclear plants everywhere are heavily taxpayer subsidized, up to 80%, even in the US (Shrader-Frechette, 2011), and standardized reactor designs make core-melt probabilities comparable, regardless of reactor ownership.
In the second sort of trimming, fission proponents report only meltdowns of which the public is likely to be aware. For instance, well-known nuclear engineers say only 2–3 reactor core melts have occurred and that atomic-energy disasters are rare (Bodansky, 1996, p. 391; but see Lochbaum, 2011). Or, they cite the US government’s prediction that: (i) a core-melt accident in the 104 US reactors will occur only once every 1000 years (NRC, 2003); suggesting (ii) a core-melt accident will occur only once every 250 years for 442 global reactors.
Yet, as explained below, (i) is doubtful because US reactors have had at least five core meltdowns in roughly 50 years—and not just one core melt in 1000 years; and (ii) is doubtful because global reactors have had at least 26 core melts in roughly 50 years—not four in 1000 years. How many meltdowns have occurred?
...
The list of core melt accidents is included, followed by the primary point:
As the preceding list of 26 nuclear core melts reveals, scientists interested in epistemically legitimate probability claims ought not use highly stipulative definitions of ‘core melt’—that prescribe using data only for ‘major’ core melts or only for civilian-owned reactors. If not, BSC is questionable insofar as it relies on such definitions (Broder et al., 2011; Gonyeau, 2005; Johnston, 2011; Smith, 2006)
Open access article available at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21550085.2011.605851
FBaggins
(26,748 posts)It's reasonable (though misguided) to look at occurrences that appear to call a supposed 1-in-20,000-year claim into question and challenge the claim of "X level of safety". It does not then become "completely valid" to make up entirely different figures out of whole cloth. You can claim (incorrectly in this case) that history proves a claim to be inaccurate... you cannot use that claimed error to justify calling this nonsense "valid".
It isn't valid to throw up your hands at a lack of data for 3rd generation designs and just make one up (pretending to be charitable). It isn't valid to count meltdowns and any reactor you can find (including the bulk that cannot in any way be labeled as "nuclear catastrophes"
, but then only count reactor-years for the ~400 commercial power reactors as a comparison. It isn't valid to ignore decades of improvements in design and regulatory oversight and pretend that the earliest experimental reactors' failures tell us something about failure rates for current designs.
He doesn't even try to explain (nor does Shrader-Frechette) how it is that reactor accident rates fell so dramatically as the number of reactors in service climbed so rapidly? Almost all of the incidents that they're counting occurred in the 50s-60s... yet what percentage of the reactor-years have occurred since then?
A few points re: the "black swan" piece:
* - Nine of the reactors on that list were Russian nautical units - nothing like commercial power reactors. Even if it were reasonable to simply divide reactor-years by incidents (it isn't)... naval reactors aren't included in the reactor-year denominator.
This alone shows how ridiculous her claims are (because they rely on the same faulty "a reactor is a reactor is a reactor" risk assessment). Nine (really more like 10-12) Russian naval reactor meltdowns... yet zero meltdowns in USN naval reactors (a couple hundred of them over many thousands of reactor-years of use). I don't think the British, French, Indian or Chinese navies have had a meltdown in their nuclear subs either.
Obviously, design, experience, operator expertise, etc. do play a role in accident frequency.
* - At least six other units on the list were early experimental or weapon-producing reactors.
* - I'll be charitable and assume that Shrader-Frechette has really poor grammar skills and is not being intentionally dishonest. Her claim that all of these events resulted "in radiation releases, death, and injury" is simply incorrect.
FBaggins
(26,748 posts)This is supposed to be the list of nuclear disasters "all resulting in radiation releases, death, and injury" that the OP author is presumably using as a count of "nuclear catastrophe" accidents involving nuclear core melt.
EBR–1 (’55) – A tiny (kilowatts… not mega – let alone giga – watts) experimental reactor from the 50s. A very minor radiation release… no deaths or injuries. The reactor was returned to service.
Santa Susana (’59) – Another experimental reactor from the 50s. No deaths or injuries (despite the unfounded claims in a lawsuit).
SL-1 (’61) – Yet another small experimental reactor (this one military and using near-weapons-grade uranium). This one was fatal for three operators. No release to the environment, no deaths or injuries, and the plant returned to service
Three Mile Island (’79) – The first case on her list that could plausibly be spun as a “nuclear catastrophe” – and even then, there were no deaths or injuries… just a ruined full-scale reactor.
Windscale (‘57) – Not a power reactor at all… it’s part of England’s A-bomb program.
Chalk River (’52 and ’58) – Another research reactor. Actually two accidents here – Neither resulting in death/injury and in both cases the reactor was returned to service.
Chapelcross (’67) – No release to speak of… no deaths… no injuries. The was restarted (and operated for decades).
St-Laurent (’69 and ’80) – Two incidents of fuel damage. No deaths or injuries and the unit returned to service.
Lucens (’69) – A small pilot reactor (8 MWe) – not much like modern reactors, but at least this one was a total loss (though I’m not aware of any deaths or injuries),.
Griefswald (’75) – She must mean 1989. I don’t think the ’75 incident even charitably counts as a meltdown. A few fuel elements damaged (in ’89), no release, no deaths or injuries.
Nine russian nautical reactors – Now how could these even be a little relevant unless your standard is merely “has nuclear in the name” ?
Then, of course, we have the two incidents that should most count (though the second is not yet known to have resulted in death or injury) - Chernobyl and Fukushima.
One wonders how much the average Chinese citizen would fear a partial melt of a couple fuel assemblies - with no injury/death or radiation release and a repaired unit reentering service. Probably not much (since most people have heard of nothing on this list beyond TMI/Chernobyl/Fukushima).
PamW
(1,825 posts)FBaggins states
I'll be charitable and assume that Shrader-Frechette has really poor grammar skills and is not being intentionally dishonest. Her claim that all of these events resulted "in radiation releases, death, and injury" is simply incorrect.
FBaggins,
You are being too kind. Shrader-Frechette is INTENTIONALLY DISHONEST.
For example, one of the reports that she cites the AEC "covered-up" was the 1957 AEC report that an accident could involve an area the size of Pennsylvania...et al.
This report was NOT covered up as the LIAR from Notre Dame states. She is referring to the famous "Brookhaven Report" aka WASH-740:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASH-740
Contrary the the LYING Professor of Ethics; the "Brookhaven Report" was prepared for Congress and PUBLISHED. See that "WASH-740"; that's the PUBLICATION NUMBER. ANYONE in the public could have written to the AEC Division of Technical Information, P.O. Box 62, Oak Ridge, TN and obtained that report.
COVER-UP INDEED!
Additionally, the Brookhaven Report was a merely a study, the was NO ACCIDENT. In order to estimate the maximum conceivable consequences of an accident; the scientists at Brookhaven ASSUMED everything that could go wrong; did. They ASSUMED that the reactor had NO CONTAINMENT BUILDING, when everyone knew that all US power reactors would be enclosed in containment buildings. They ASSUMED an accident and core breach; without any physical attribution.
I don't know how anybody can, with any degree of honesty, claim to be a "Professor of Ethics" and then LIE as much as Shrader-Frechette.
I guess it's not LYING to tell FALSEHOODS when it promotes one's own parochial self-righteous goals.
The ONLY case of the 5 she presents as causing death and injury; was SL-1; an experimental MILITARY test reactor in Idaho.
EBR-1 involved the contained melting of the little experimental EBR-1 core; which was about the size of a coffee can.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBR-1
Experimental Breeder Reactor I (EBR-I) is a decommissioned research reactor and U.S. National Historic Landmark located in the desert about 18 miles (29 km) southeast of Arco, Idaho. At 1:50 pm on December 20, 1951 it became the world's first electricity-generating nuclear power plant when it produced sufficient electricity to illuminate four 200-watt light bulbs. It subsequently generated sufficient electricity to power its building, and continued to be used for experimental purposes until it was decommissioned in 1964.
Fermi 1 involved the melting of 4 assemblies. The Three Mile Island accident resulted in no harm to the public. In fact, when residents sued Metropolitan Edison, the owner of TMI; their case was summarily dismissed by the judge. Ruling of Judge Sylvia Rambo:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/tmi.html
As is clear from the preceding discussion, the discrepancies between Defendants, proffer of evidence and that put forth by Plaintiffs in both volume and complexity are vast. The paucity of proof alleged in support of Plaintiffs, case is manifest. The court has searched the record for any and all evidence which construed in a light most favorable to Plaintiffs creates a genuine issue of material fact warranting submission of their claims to a jury. This effort has been in vain.
As opposed to the MASSIVE LIES of Shrader-Frechette; the only accidents resulting in deaths were Chernobyl and SL-1, and the latter is suspected of being a suicide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1
The most common theories proposed for the withdrawal of the rod so far are (1) sabotage or suicide by one of the operators, (2) a suicide-murder involving an affair with the wife of one of the other operators, (3) inadvertent withdrawal of the main control rod, or (4) an intentional attempt to "exercise" the rod (to make it travel more smoothly within its sheath).[17] [18] The maintenance logs do not address what the technicians were attempting to do, and thus the actual cause of the incident will never be known. The investigation took almost two years to complete.
PamW
kristopher
(29,798 posts)So your basis for all of the name calling is a wiki article that doesn't even address her statement that material was withheld from the public while Strauss was on his too cheap to meter road tour?
.
I invite you to review the "liars" biography below:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/112759049#post12
You say she writes the papers because she rejects nuclear power. I'd say that given her qualifications, she is more likely to be against the nuclear industry because of the research she's done.
The nuclear industry and its lackeys on the internet just love to play the victim card. Who else do we know that makes being a 'victim' a mainstay of their defense against critics?
kristopher
(29,798 posts)Open access article available at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21550085.2011.605851
Repeating the data trimming you are being criticized for isn't a demonstration that the nuclear industry claims made to the public are accurate nor does it show a willingness to engage in honest discussion for the benefit of public understanding. In fact, it does exactly the opposite by highlighting the nuclear industry's agenda driven misuse of the authority of 'science'.
FBaggins
(26,748 posts)... you can't defend a claim of a specific accident frequency (and applying it to a "highly probable" date) by saying that some other estimate is wrong.
You can't spin from that.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)As I wrote in the OP before the text of the article:
Now you are pointing to the sensationalism because you know the industry is playing fast and loose with statistics in an attempt to sugarcoat the frequency of meltdowns.
FBaggins
(26,748 posts)Nope... though I use it as an example. It's the "Argument behind it" (that you can predict the future frequency of major reactor accidents for new designs by looking at the past frequency of entirely different designs) that you've claimed is "completely valid". I haven't been defending some industry estimate, I've been laughing at the one you felt was valid.
If instead of the "argument behind" the sensationalistic claim, you instead meant to say something else... that's another thing entirely.
because you know the industry is playing fast and loose with statistics
Lol! There's some "playing fast and loose with statistics" here... and it's all on the side that you're defending as valid - as well as your own incorrect (to be charitable) claim that the industry has always claimed that core damage frequency would be once in 20,000 reactor years.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)And she says it frequently about most of the the nuclear industry claims your ilk bring to this forum to "educate" people with. I underlined the some of the important and relevant parts of her bio. I guess I should have just underlined the entire document.
Kristin Shrader-Frechette, Biographical Sketch
Kristin Shrader-Frechette has held senior professorships at the University of California and the University of Florida. She is now O'Neill Family Professor, Department of Biological Sciences and Department of Philosophy, at the University of Notre Dame, where she directs the Center for Environmental Justice and Children's Health. She studied physics at Xavier University and graduated summa cum laude, with an undergraduate major in mathematics from Edgecliff College, Xavier University. She received her Ph.D. in philosophy of science from the University of Notre Dame and also did postdoctoral work for 2, 1, and 2 years, respectively, in biology, economics, and hydrogeology. She has held Woodrow Wilson, National Science Foundation, and Carnegie Fellowships in philosophy of science and has held offices/served on committees in the US National Academy of Sciences, the Risk Assessment and Policy Association, the American Philosophical Association, the Philosophy of Science Association, the Society for Philosophy and Technology, and the International Society for Environmental Ethics. Shrader-Frechette has been a member of many boards and committees of the International Commission on Radiological Protection, US Environmental Protection Agency, National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement, and the US National Academy of Sciences, including its Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, its Committee on Risk Characterization, and its Committee on Zinc-Cadmium-Sulfide Dispersions.
In 2004 Shrader-Frechette became only the third American to win the World Technology Award in Ethics. Earlier a Harvard professor won for work in biomedical ethics, and a Princeton professor won for work in development ethics. She won for her work in public-health and environmental ethics. In 2007, Catholic Digest named her one of 12 "Heroes for the US and the World" because of her pro-bono environmental-justice (EJ) work with minority and poor communities. In 2011, Tufts University gave her the Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award for her pro-bono public- health and EJ Work.
Associate Editor of BioScience until 2002, Shrader-Frechette is Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford University Press monograph series on Environmental Ethics and Science Policy and spent two terms on the US EPA Science Advisory Board. She also serves on the editorial boards of 23 professional journals. Past-President of the Society for Philosophy and Technology, the Risk Assessment and Policy Association, and the International Society for Environmental Ethics, Shrader-Frechette was the first woman president of all three international organizations (SPT, RAPA, ISEE). She has served as Principal Investigator (PI) for grants from the US National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Department of Energy. NSF has funded her research for 28 years. Recently she finished research as PI on a $224,000 NSF grant on ethical/policy issues associated with worker exposure to ionizing radiation. Currently she is a member of the project team for a $ 3-million NSF grant, "Global Linkages of Biology, Environment, Society," and she is now finishing work as PI on another NSF grant, one examining methodological problems in epidemiological statistics.
Most of Shrader-Frechette's research analyzes mathematical, biological, or ethical problems in risk assessment, public health, or environmental justice--especially those related to radiological, ecological, and energy-related risks. An enthusiastic teacher as well as a researcher, she also has won the annual university-wide award for "Outstanding Teacher." Shrader-Frechette has published more than 380 articles and 16 books/monographs: Nuclear Power and Public Policy (1980, 1983); Environmental Ethics (1981, 1991); Four Methodological Assumptions in Cost-Benefit Analysis (1983); Science Policy, Ethics, and Economic Methodology (1984); Risk Analysis and Scientific Method (1985); Nuclear Energy and Ethics (1991); Risk and Rationality (1991); Policy for Land: Law and Ethics (1992); Burying Uncertainty: Risk and the Case Against Geological Disposal of Nuclear Waste (1993); Method in Ecology (1993); The Ethics of Scientific Research (1994), Technology and Human Values (1996), Environmental Justice: Creating Equality, Reclaiming Democracy (2002), Taking Action, Saving Lives: Our Duties to Protect Environmental and Public Health (2007), and What Will Work: Fighting Climate Change with Renewable Energy, Not Nuclear Power (2011). Her theoretical essays have appeared in philosophical journals such as Ethics, Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, and Synthese, as well as in science journals such as Science, BioScience, Health Physics, Conservation Biology, Quarterly Review of Biology, OIKOS, and Trends in Ecology and Evolution. She has also published in more applied journals such as Environmental Professional, Modern Energy Review, Energy Policy Studies, IEEE Spectrum, IEEE Technology and Society, Environmental Ethics, and Journal of Business Ethics. Her books and articles have been translated into 13 languages--Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Russian, and Spanish. Shrader-Frechette is currently working on two new volumes: Risks of Risk Assessment and Philosophy of Science and Public Policy.
Widely requested as a lecturer by university, government, and industrial groups in the Americas, Europe, China, India, Africa, and Russia, Shrader-Frechette has been invited to address the National Academies of Science in three countries. She has served as an advisor to numerous governments and international organizations, including the United Nations and the World Health Organization. She and her husband Maurice, a mathematician/computer scientist, have two children, Danielle and Eric, both National Merit Scholarship winners, both recent honors graduates of Princeton. Danielle is a 2012 Northwestern University law graduate, practicing law in Chicago, and Eric is a University of California M.D./Ph.D. who is practicing neurology in California. The family spends free time canoeing, scuba diving, hiking, and doing volunteer work.
http://www3.nd.edu/~kshrader/ksf-biosketch-5-15-13.pdf
A sampling of her publications can be found here:
http://www.nd.edu/~kshrader/pubs/
FBaggins
(26,748 posts)"The argument" behind the sensationalistic headline is that China (if it doesn't change course on nuclear) is headed for a nuclear catastrophe in the near future.
Shrader-Frechette's nonsense was offered by you as a possible source for the claimed (and false) denominator for the (faulty) reactor-years/meltdowns calculation.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)
And yep... it's laughable.
Seriously... you believe that ALL of those examples involved radiation releases, injury and death?
kristopher
(29,798 posts)Its use is specifically mentioned as a method of data trimming. That was already pointed out to you the first time you said it.
FBaggins
(26,748 posts)It doesn't work. You can't include the stopping distance and highway fatalities of 1950s automobiles as a refutation of claims that cars with antilock brakes are safer at 70 mph... and you can't make the argument more rational by "specifically mentioning" that "some people will try to tell you that including 1950s cars and racing motorcycles in the data isn't valid when talking about current auto safety... but such highly stipulative definitions should be avoided"
kristopher
(29,798 posts)It is a perfect example of how the nuclear industry routinely excludes data that will lead to an outcome not in their favor.
As for your example, that isn't what is happening. The better analogy would have the auto industry making the claim that automobile brake failures can't happen by doing a study that excludes all automobile accidents.
kristopher inquires
or only for civilian-owned reactors.
kristopher,
It depends on what one is trying to measure or estimate.
For example, the Rasmussen Report aka WASH-1400; the goal was to determine the probability of an accident in a civilian nuclear power plant.
Therefore, only the data from the civilian power plants was applicable.
For example, in a series of tests called the BORAX tests; small reactors in Idaho were intentionally "blown up".
Do you include an intentional "accident" in your estimate of accident probabilities?
Of course, NOT. The BORAX tests were DESIGNED to go "boom". Therefore, the fact that the scientists MADE the test go "boom" doesn't tell you anything about what would have happened if probability had been allowed to take its course.
Tell us again your training in science so we can judge your claims that science was "misused" or abused?
PamW
We'll just throw your red herrings aside and focus on the person you are calling a biased liar.
Kristin Shrader-Frechette has held senior professorships at the University of California and the University of Florida.
She is now O'Neill Family Professor, Department of Biological Sciences and Department of Philosophy, at the University of Notre Dame, where she directs the Center for Environmental Justice and Children's Health.
She studied physics at Xavier University and graduated summa cum laude,
with
an undergraduate major in mathematics from Edgecliff College, Xavier University.
She received her Ph.D. in philosophy of science from the University of Notre Dame
and
also did postdoctoral work for 2, 1, and 2 years, respectively, in
biology,
economics, and
hydrogeology.
She has held
Woodrow Wilson,
National Science Foundation,
and
Carnegie Fellowships
in
philosophy of science
and
has held offices/served on committees
in
the US National Academy of Sciences,
the Risk Assessment and Policy Association,
the American Philosophical Association,
the Philosophy of Science Association,
the Society for Philosophy and Technology,
and
the International Society for Environmental Ethics.
Shrader-Frechette has been a member of many boards and committees of
the International Commission on Radiological Protection,
US Environmental Protection Agency,
National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement,
and
the US National Academy of Sciences,
including its
Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology,
its
Committee on Risk Characterization,
and its
Committee on Zinc-Cadmium-Sulfide Dispersions.
In 2004 Shrader-Frechette became only the third American to win the World Technology Award in Ethics.
Earlier a Harvard professor won for work in biomedical ethics, and a Princeton professor won for work in development ethics.
She won for her work in public-health and environmental ethics.
In 2007, Catholic Digest named her one of 12 "Heroes for the US and the World" because of her pro-bono environmental-justice (EJ) work with minority and poor communities.
In 2011, Tufts University gave her the Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award for her pro-bono public- health and EJ Work.
Associate Editor of BioScience until 2002, Shrader-Frechette is
Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford University Press monograph series on Environmental Ethics and Science Policy
and
spent two terms on the US EPA Science Advisory Board.
She also serves on the editorial boards of 23 professional journals.
Past-President of
the Society for Philosophy and Technology,
the Risk Assessment and Policy Association,
and
the International Society for Environmental Ethics,
Shrader-Frechette was the first woman president of all three international organizations (SPT, RAPA, ISEE).
She has served as Principal Investigator (PI) for grants from
the US National Science Foundation,
National Endowment for the Humanities,
and
Department of Energy.
NSF has funded her research for 28 years.
Recently she finished research as PI on a $224,000 NSF grant on ethical/policy issues associated with worker exposure to ionizing radiation.
Currently she is a member of the project team for a $ 3-million NSF grant, "Global Linkages of Biology, Environment, Society,"
and
she is now finishing work as PI on another NSF grant, one examining methodological problems in epidemiological statistics.
Most of Shrader-Frechette's research analyzes
mathematical,
biological,
or
ethical problems
in
risk assessment,
public health, or
environmental justice-
-especially those related to radiological, ecological, and energy-related risks.
An enthusiastic teacher as well as a researcher, she also has won the annual university-wide award for "Outstanding Teacher."
Shrader-Frechette has published more than 380 articles and 16 books/monographs:
Nuclear Power and Public Policy (1980, 1983);
Environmental Ethics (1981, 1991);
Four Methodological Assumptions in Cost-Benefit Analysis (1983);
Science Policy, Ethics, and Economic Methodology (1984);
Risk Analysis and Scientific Method (1985);
Nuclear Energy and Ethics (1991);
Risk and Rationality (1991);
Policy for Land: Law and Ethics (1992);
Burying Uncertainty: Risk and the Case Against Geological Disposal of Nuclear Waste (1993);
Method in Ecology (1993);
The Ethics of Scientific Research (1994),
Technology and Human Values (1996),
Environmental Justice: Creating Equality, Reclaiming Democracy (2002),
Taking Action, Saving Lives: Our Duties to Protect Environmental and Public Health (2007), and
What Will Work: Fighting Climate Change with Renewable Energy, Not Nuclear Power (2011).
Her theoretical essays have appeared in philosophical journals such as
Ethics,
Journal of Philosophy,
Philosophy of Science,
and
Synthese,
as well as in science journals such as
Science,
BioScience,
Health Physics,
Conservation Biology,
Quarterly Review of Biology,
OIKOS,
and
Trends in Ecology and Evolution.
She has also published in more applied journals
such as
Environmental Professional,
Modern Energy Review,
Energy Policy Studies,
IEEE Spectrum,
IEEE Technology and Society,
Environmental Ethics, and
Journal of Business Ethics.
Her books and articles have been translated into 13 languages--
Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Russian, and Spanish.
Shrader-Frechette is currently working on two new volumes:
Risks of Risk Assessment
and
Philosophy of Science and Public Policy.
Widely requested as a lecturer by university, government, and industrial groups in the Americas, Europe, China, India, Africa, and Russia, Shrader-Frechette has been invited to address the National Academies of Science in three countries.
She has served as an advisor to numerous governments and international organizations, including the United Nations and the World Health Organization.
She and her husband Maurice, a mathematician/computer scientist, have two children, Danielle and Eric, both National Merit Scholarship winners, both recent honors graduates of Princeton. Danielle is a 2012 Northwestern University law graduate, practicing law in Chicago, and Eric is a University of California M.D./Ph.D. who is practicing neurology in California.
The family spends free time canoeing, scuba diving, hiking, and doing volunteer work.
PamW
(1,825 posts)kristopher,
Where do you get this penchant for non-sequiturs when it comes to deciding questions of FACT?
WHO CARES that she and her family like to dive and canoe, or that her kids got National Merit Scholarships?
NONE of that carries ANY weight when determining the accuracy of her claims.
The point you can NOT RUN AWAY FROM is that she is a DAMN LIAR
She claims public reports to Congress which ANYONE could get from the AEC were "covered-up".
She claims that accidents / events at test reactors are somehow relevant to the safety of commercial facilities.
Consider the following analogy to realize how DISINGENUOUS this last claim is.
There is an EXTREMELY LOW risk in flying in a commercial airliner.
However, the designers / engineers are always "pushing the envelope" with any aircraft to determine its limits.
Occasionally, they find those limits and go over them, and the aircraft crashes.
How does the fact that the craft crashes when pushed to the limits in a test have to do with its safety in normal operation.
The point is IT DOESN'T
However, the LYING Professor of Self-Righteousness "thinks" ( term used loosely ) that such events are meaningful to the risk in normal operation.
THAT is the true misuse of science. That is NOT ethics.
It's NOT ethical to LIE to people, to MISINFORM them; in order to have them join your way of "thinking".
That's "the ends justifies the means"; and any REAL ethicist knows that justification is UNETHICAL.
So please don't waste any more bandwidth telling us what wines or foods the LIAR enjoys.
PamW
kristopher
(29,798 posts)This informs the subthread starting in post 2.
The Frequency Fallacy
A second illegitimate defense of BSC is through the frequency fallacy, confusing core-melt-relative-frequency data with subjective probabilities. Yet ‘probability’ can mean: (i) ‘classical probability;’ (ii) ‘relative frequency;’ or (iii) ‘subjective probability,’ not all of which are applicable to nuclear-core-melt assessment.
Classical probability (i) is illustrated by card games in which the deck contains a fixed number of cards, for example 52. The probability of an event (e) thus equals the number of possible favorable outcomes (f) divided by the total number of possible outcomes (n): P(e)?=?f/n. Provided the deck of cards is fair, each card has an equal chance of being picked, and the probability (i) of picking an ace?=?4/52. Thus, (i) assumes that all possible outcomes are equally likely and that we know n—neither of which is the case regarding nuclear-accident outcomes.
Relative-frequency probability (ii) is often used for cases where the number of outcomes (n) is so great that all typically cannot be observed, as in the probability (ii) that current 5-year-olds will contract cancer. We cannot observe all 5-year-olds throughout their lifetimes, but can reliably predict cancer probability for random, typical 5-year-olds, if we observe a large-enough, long-enough sample. Thus, if we observed 1000 5-year-olds over their lifetimes, if samples were representative and large enough, and if we observed 350 cancer deaths, we could say this cancer probability was roughly P(e)?=?35.0% (350/1000). We cannot predict with certainty, however, unless we know the frequency of all relevant events—whether lifetime cancers or total nuclear-core melts. Given that preceding core-melt lists include all occurrences (consistent with the three caveats), those lists suggest an almost-certain, core-melt probability (ii)?=?core melts/total reactors?=?26/442?=?roughly a 6% probability (ii)—roughly a 1 in 16 chance of core melt—which is hardly a low probability.
Subjective probability (iii) relies only on what people think particular probabilities are. The odds people get when they bet at racetracks are subjective probabilities because if the probabilities were objective, smart players would always win.?Obviously (iii) does not provide reliable nuclear-core-melt probabilities because it is based not on facts, but on what people think about facts. Nuclear proponents think the facts are one way, and opponents think they are another. Both cannot always be correct. Since (iii) is subjective and could be inconsistent, and because (i) would require knowing n and knowing a falsehood (that all reactor outcomes were equally likely), (ii) appears most relevant to nuclear-core-melt assessment.
As preceding sections revealed, however, typical atomic-energy advocates use (iii) not (ii) to assess core-melt probabilities, such as when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said core-melt accidents, for all 104 US reactors, would only occur once every 1000 years. Instead, the NRC should have made predictions based on government inspections, independent analyses, and accident-frequency data, not ‘on [subjective-probability] data submitted by plant owners’ (Broder et al., 2011, p. D1). The NRC predecessor agency, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) also has a long history of making BSC based on (iii). AEC said the probability of a US nuclear core meltdown is 1 in 17,000 per reactor year (AEC, 1957; Mulvihill et al., 1965).
Even universities erroneously use subjective probabilities (iii), not frequencies (ii), to assess nuclear-core-melt likelihood, particularly when pro-nuclear-government agencies fund their studies. For instance, although the classic, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)-authored, government-funded, reactor-safety study had frequency data for various nuclear accidents that already had occurred after decades of US-operating experience, it did not use them; instead the MIT authors used subjective, pro-nuclear assumptions and conjectures about these accident probabilities (Rasmussen, 1975). When independent, university mathematicians compared US nuclear-accident-frequency data, reported from operating experience, with MIT guesses (iii), they discovered that all ‘guesses’ were far too low, by several orders of magnitude. None of the nuclear-accident-frequency data, based on reactor-operating experience, was within the theoretical, 90% confidence interval of the MIT ‘guesses.’Yet there is only a subjective probability of 10% that any of these true (frequency-based) probability values (for different types of reactor accidents) should fall outside this 90% interval. The conclusion? University mathematicians said that MIT assessors were guilty of a massive ‘overconfidence’ bias toward nuclear safety, a typical flaw in most industry-government-funded, nuclear-risk analyses (Cooke, 1982).
This fallacious substitution of subjective probabilities (iii)—for nuclear-core-melt frequencies (ii)—has at least two interesting parallels, namely, nuclear-industry preferences for subjective opinions, over empirical data, in reporting both nuclear costs and carbon-equivalent emissions. Since most nuclear-industry-performed studies employ purely subjective economic estimates, instead of empirical-cost data, they counterfactually assume that nuclear-load factors are 90–95%, that average reactor lifetimes are 50–60 years, and that nuclear-construction-loan-interest rates are 0%. Yet in reality, industry-collected empirical data show average nuclear-load factors are 71%, not 90–95%; average reactor lifetimes are 22, not 50–60 years; and nuclear-interest rates are at least 15%, not 0%. When one corrects only five subjective (counterfactual) nuclear-cost assumptions with actual empirical data, nuclear costs rise 700% above industry-reported costs, revealing that fission is far more expensive than wind or solar-photovoltaic. Similarly, most nuclear-industry-performed studies claim that atomic energy is carbon-emissions-free—a claim dependent on subjectively counting only emissions from reactor operation, not emissions from the entire, 14-stage nuclear-fuel cycle. Once one counts all fuel-cycle emissions, the ratios of carbon emissions are roughly 112 coal : 49 gas : 7 nuclear : 4 solar : 1 wind. For low-grade-uranium ores, the nuclear ratios are even worse: 112 coal : 49 gas : 49 nuclear : 4 solar : 1 wind (Shrader-Frechette, 2011).
From the journal
Ethics, Policy & Environment
Fukushima, Flawed Epistemology, and Black-Swan Events
Dr Kristin Shrader-Frechette
The full discussion is available for download here
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21550085.2011.605851
kristopher
(29,798 posts)kristopher
(29,798 posts)Last edited Tue Jan 14, 2014, 07:40 PM - Edit history (1)
PamW
(1,825 posts)As FBaggins has made clear, the above analysis is rather SIMPLISTIC. It's not scientifically valid to claim that a probability ( even one simplistically calculated ) for past reactor plants is somehow indicative of what probabilities are going to be for future designs that share little in common with past designs.
Especially, when the Chinese nuclear power effort is being overseen by scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory:
Special Report: The US government lab behind China's nuclear power push
http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/sns-rt-us-breakout-thorium-special-report-20131220,0,6829640,full.story
The Chinese nuclear power push is being guided by scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
So much also for kristopher's contentions that since I'm in favor of nuclear power, that means I'm not honest, and if I'm not honest; then I'm not a scientist.
Would anyone call the scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as "not scientists" because they support nuclear power?
The Oak Ridge scientists certainly are scientists, and they do support nuclear power. So much for kristopher's contentions that being in favor of nuclear power is a disqualification from being a scientist.
PamW
kristopher
(29,798 posts)Even universities erroneously use subjective probabilities (iii), not frequencies (ii), to assess nuclear-core-melt likelihood, particularly when pro-nuclear-government agencies fund their studies. For instance, although the classic, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)-authored, government-funded, reactor-safety study had frequency data for various nuclear accidents that already had occurred after decades of US-operating experience, it did not use them; instead the MIT authors usedsubjective, pro-nuclear assumptions and conjectures about these accident probabilities (Rasmussen, 1975). When independent, university mathematicians compared US nuclear-accident-frequency data, reported from operating experience, with MIT guesses (iii), they discovered that all ‘guesses’ were far too low, by several orders of magnitude. None of the nuclear-accident-frequency data, based on reactor-operating experience, was within the theoretical, 90% confidence interval of the MIT ‘guesses.’Yet there is only a subjective probability of 10% that any of these true (frequency-based) probability values (for different types of reactor accidents) should fall outside this 90% interval. The conclusion? University mathematicians said that MIT assessors were guilty of a massive ‘overconfidence’ bias toward nuclear safety, a typical flaw in most industry-government-funded, nuclear-risk analyses (Cooke, 1982).
A second illegitimate defense of BSC is through the frequency fallacy, confusing core-melt-relative-frequency data with subjective probabilities. Yet ‘probability’ can mean: (i) ‘classical probability;’ (ii) ‘relative frequency;’ or (iii) ‘subjective probability,’ not all of which are applicable to nuclear-core-melt assessment.
Classical probability (i) is illustrated by card games in which the deck contains a fixed number of cards, for example 52. The probability of an event (e) thus equals the number of possible favorable outcomes (f) divided by the total number of possible outcomes (n): P(e)?=?f/n. Provided the deck of cards is fair, each card has an equal chance of being picked, and the probability (i) of picking an ace?=?4/52. Thus, (i) assumes that all possible outcomes are equally likely and that we know n—neither of which is the case regarding nuclear-accident outcomes.
Relative-frequency probability (ii) is often used for cases where the number of outcomes (n) is so great that all typically cannot be observed, as in the probability (ii) that current 5-year-olds will contract cancer. We cannot observe all 5-year-olds throughout their lifetimes, but can reliably predict cancer probability for random, typical 5-year-olds, if we observe a large-enough, long-enough sample. Thus, if we observed 1000 5-year-olds over their lifetimes, if samples were representative and large enough, and if we observed 350 cancer deaths, we could say this cancer probability was roughly P(e)?=?35.0% (350/1000). We cannot predict with certainty, however, unless we know the frequency of all relevant events—whether lifetime cancers or total nuclear-core melts. Given that preceding core-melt lists include all occurrences (consistent with the three caveats), those lists suggest an almost-certain, core-melt probability (ii)?=?core melts/total reactors?=?26/442?=?roughly a 6% probability (ii)—roughly a 1 in 16 chance of core melt—which is hardly a low probability.
Subjective probability (iii) relies only on what people think particular probabilities are. The odds people get when they bet at racetracks are subjective probabilities because if the probabilities were objective, smart players would always win.?Obviously (iii) does not provide reliable nuclear-core-melt probabilities because it is based not on facts, but on what people think about facts. Nuclear proponents think the facts are one way, and opponents think they are another. Both cannot always be correct. Since (iii) is subjective and could be inconsistent, and because (i) would require knowing n and knowing a falsehood (that all reactor outcomes were equally likely), (ii) appears most relevant to nuclear-core-melt assessment.
As preceding sections revealed, however, typical atomic-energy advocates use (iii) not (ii) to assess core-melt probabilities, such as when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said core-melt accidents, for all 104 US reactors, would only occur once every 1000 years. Instead, the NRC should have made predictions based on government inspections, independent analyses, and accident-frequency data, not ‘on [subjective-probability] data submitted by plant owners’ (Broder et al., 2011, p. D1). The NRC predecessor agency, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) also has a long history of making BSC based on (iii). AEC said the probability of a US nuclear core meltdown is 1 in 17,000 per reactor year (AEC, 1957; Mulvihill et al., 1965).
Even universities erroneously use subjective probabilities (iii), not frequencies (ii), to assess nuclear-core-melt likelihood, particularly when pro-nuclear-government agencies fund their studies. For instance, although the classic, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)-authored, government-funded, reactor-safety study had frequency data for various nuclear accidents that already had occurred after decades of US-operating experience, it did not use them; instead the MIT authors used subjective, pro-nuclear assumptions and conjectures about these accident probabilities (Rasmussen, 1975). When independent, university mathematicians compared US nuclear-accident-frequency data, reported from operating experience, with MIT guesses (iii), they discovered that all ‘guesses’ were far too low, by several orders of magnitude. None of the nuclear-accident-frequency data, based on reactor-operating experience, was within the theoretical, 90% confidence interval of the MIT ‘guesses.’Yet there is only a subjective probability of 10% that any of these true (frequency-based) probability values (for different types of reactor accidents) should fall outside this 90% interval. The conclusion? University mathematicians said that MIT assessors were guilty of a massive ‘overconfidence’ bias toward nuclear safety, a typical flaw in most industry-government-funded, nuclear-risk analyses (Cooke, 1982).
This fallacious substitution of subjective probabilities (iii)—for nuclear-core-melt frequencies (ii)—has at least two interesting parallels, namely, nuclear-industry preferences for subjective opinions, over empirical data, in reporting both nuclear costs and carbon-equivalent emissions. Since most nuclear-industry-performed studies employ purely subjective economic estimates, instead of empirical-cost data, they counterfactually assume that nuclear-load factors are 90–95%, that average reactor lifetimes are 50–60 years, and that nuclear-construction-loan-interest rates are 0%. Yet in reality, industry-collected empirical data show average nuclear-load factors are 71%, not 90–95%; average reactor lifetimes are 22, not 50–60 years; and nuclear-interest rates are at least 15%, not 0%. When one corrects only five subjective (counterfactual) nuclear-cost assumptions with actual empirical data, nuclear costs rise 700% above industry-reported costs, revealing that fission is far more expensive than wind or solar-photovoltaic. Similarly, most nuclear-industry-performed studies claim that atomic energy is carbon-emissions-free—a claim dependent on subjectively counting only emissions from reactor operation, not emissions from the entire, 14-stage nuclear-fuel cycle. Once one counts all fuel-cycle emissions, the ratios of carbon emissions are roughly 112 coal : 49 gas : 7 nuclear : 4 solar : 1 wind. For low-grade-uranium ores, the nuclear ratios are even worse: 112 coal : 49 gas : 49 nuclear : 4 solar : 1 wind (Shrader-Frechette, 2011).
From the journal
Ethics, Policy & Environment
Fukushima, Flawed Epistemology, and Black-Swan Events
Dr Kristin Shrader-Frechette
The full discussion is available for download here
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21550085.2011.605851
PamW
(1,825 posts)kristopher and Schrader-Frechette make similar ERRORS in applying probability theory.
It's a very simple error. You can't forecast probabilities for one system based on past probabilities for another.
For example, one can't use the rate of traffic accidents for horse and buggies to predict what the accident rates are going to be for cars.
Likewise, one can't use the accident rates for old nuclear power plants, and apply those probabilities to new plants with newer, different designs.
Again, horse and buggies don't tell you about cars; and old nuclear power plants don't tell you about newer designs with enhanced safety features.
PamW
kristopher
(29,798 posts)Explain these findings then.
And while you're at it, you can explain the method related failures of cost predictions and claims of reactor performance.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)See post 28